Really Hurting

At this time last year, Bernie and I were hurtling across the country, ostensibly to my sister's rescue.

She's dead now; the rescue was in vain.

Under the smoky skies, looking at the date, I imagined trying to explain to her why her rescue failed; to tell her how much I loved her, and how powerless I felt.

I tried to tell her tonight, hoping that somehow she would hear me.

The worst hell I can imagine is meeting her again in the next life and having her demand of me, "Why didn't you help me?"

I tried, and I failed, and the loss of my sister's life is still ripping me apart.

But Then Came the Bad News ...

What was for us a charming little thundershower was for many others, a disaster.

Lightning from the storm set off over 700 fires around the state. 700.

And our lovely cooling trend is ruined -- the air is too smoky to be outdoors safely.

And the virus I had got drastically worse. Here comes pneumonia like a freight train! Fortunately I went to the doctor Monday and we were able to head it off before it was fully-fledged.

I hope the fires are under control soon, for everyone's sake.

A Day at the Resort

Since the last entry, I came down with yet another virus, one Lillian brought home from the last week of Kindergarten, when some smarmy stupid cow mama thought that keeping her sick kid home from school for the final party of the year would traumatize her child forever. "He's running a fever, but it would be so unfair for him to miss the Last Day of School ..."

God alone knows how many kids started their summer vacation sick because of that selfish, immature parent.

The virus laid Lil low for about three days. I'm hoping that I'm over the worst of it. Night before last I hardly slept for coughing, and even pulled a muscle in my throat from it. Last night I slept sitting up in the New Comfy Chair, and it wasn't TOO bad. I still awoke groggy and feeling digestively challenged by the cough suppressant/antihistamine, but by 10 am, had stopped coughing enough to rise to the effort of cleaning up the back patio after all those freakin' windy days.

I took my time and methodically swept up the fallen leaves and crud that had been blown onto the patio, and re-arranged the furniture there. I took a break to drink a pint of water, because the temperature at 9am had already been at 92. It was, by then, close to 11am.

I put on my bathing suit and hosed the accumulated dust off the patio. The result? Paradise. The chairs were in the shade, the pool was glistening in the sun, and Bernie was awake. We spent the next six hours outside, dipping in the pool for cool, sipping wine, reading our respective books, and ... getting rained on.

RAIN.

In June.

We'd just leisurely paddled down to the deep end of the pool, when I looked at the sky to the south and said, "Whoa, if we were back east, I'd say it was going to thundershower!"

The unpredicted bank of clouds was gray and nasty looking; I started scanning the edges for funnel clouds. But we're in Central California; it just doesn't do that here.

We sat on the ledge over the 8-ft end, and there was a low rumble. Bernie laughed. "That's thunder."

"It was not," I retorted. "That was some dumbass's car that doesn't have a muffler."

The sky pealed again, unmistakably not like a car. We got out of the pool.

Still not believing the clouds had anything to do with California, we called Alex and Lillian out to listen. And then it began to rain on us, while we sat reading our books. We had to put the books away, and the cloth cushions indoors. It rained harder than it did the last winter rain we had.

No, we did not go indoors with the cushions. We sat outside through it all under the lemon tree, cackling at the amazing turns of fate. Pass up the chance to be rained on in June in California's Central Valley? Not likely.

The rest of the afternoon we spent under the clouds (no more thunder came) until the wave passed and the sun came out again, and we finished reading our books. We played in the pool until we were raisins, and had a wholly wonderful day.

Aside from the occasional paroxysms of coughing that made me feel like I was being shredded.

The cloud cover and storm kept us no hotter than 100 degrees, which isn't too bad. Tomorrow is supposed to be about 10 degrees cooler, and the good news is, the patio is already nice and clean.

Killing Time

So pretty.

Stinkin' blasted plant. It's called "bindweed" because what it does is crawl all over other plants and choke them to death.

I had had it eradicated in my yard the year after we moved here; then we got new neighbors, and the lady of the house thought it was a pretty groundcover and let it run rampant.

Then she got a garden service that comes weekly and sprays weedkiller, so she no longer has a bindweed problem. Once again, I do, and alas, I'm very bad at spraying weedkiller weekly.

Maybe I'll do that today. Wednesday is a good day for killing things, isn't it?

One Pretty Day

Yesterday the winds did not race across the dusty Valley.

When I got up, it was cool and pleasant, and the sunlight reflected off the pool to cast sweet morning shadows on the retaining wall beneath the alstromeria.

Bernie and I had lunch in Modesto, then came home and swam together in the pool with Howie before he had to leave for work. It was a nice day, and we planned to do more swimming today after lunch.

Well, forget that. By 7 am the branches of the neighborhood trees were thrashing so loudly it made my scalp crawl to listen. I checked the weather ... yet ANOTHER wind advisory, to last all day today, and all night, and all day tomorrow.

And then it's supposed to get hotter than hell.

So much for idyllic California weather.

Made Alex Hook It Up

So, so weary!

It wasn't a physical day -- not with the damned latest wind storm in progress. Can't play or work outside, too much dust in the air.

However, mental activities can be tiring, too. I worked on the Press this morning; except for the cover image, which should be done tomorrow, it's ready to go. (No Fever Dreams cartoon this week; there's a limit to how many articles I want carrying my byline. It's the Piker Press, not the Sand Pilarski Dog and Pony Show.)

When I had a few minutes to spare, I had a look at the Belmont Stakes site. The race is tomorrow, and Big Brown is the favorite. I'd looked at the Kentucky Derby on line some weeks ago, and Bernie had told me he'd seen an impressive clip of the Preakness. (Note: The horse races "Kentucky Derby", the "Preakness", and the "Belmont Stakes" comprise a series of grueling races called "The Triple Crown." When I lived on the East Coast, coverage of the races was huge; out here on the Other Coast, it's lucky if I see anything in the newspapers at all.)

So as my morning break, I Googled the Derby again, and then the Preakness, and was truly impressed by the performance of the favorite. He's not Secretariat, who, back in '73, stole my heart in the Derby post parade, before I knew anything about him, but Big Brown is a looker, and he pulled off that Preakness sprint with a lot of class.

The video I saw online showed the horse after the amazing surge of speed in the Preakness, after he'd won, with the jockey trying to slow the horse to a jog. Big Brown was fighting like a son of a bitch -- he wanted to keep on running. It was at that point that I suddenly had hairs turning gray remembering that our television was DEAD.

Bernie had just crawled out of bed and was feebly drinking coffee when I hit him with, "Dammit, the Belmont's tomorrow and we don't have a TV!!! And Baffert says he thinks Big Brown is a freak of nature and can pull off a Triple Crown!!! @!##!#!"

"You have got to watch your mouth when Lillian is home from school," he suggested groggily. But after I provided him with a sumptuous lunch of pork steak, parsley potatoes and butter, and white and yellow corn (mmm, sweet) he fired up the erstwhile "good" laptop (I still haven't forgiven it for eating 1100 words I wrote) and did the final research on TV's. "If you want a TV, you can go get it. Otherwise, you can wait until tomorrow and we'll see if we can get it before the race."

I was dressed and out the door before he was even ready to take his shower in preparation for work, stash dollars in pocket.

Never in my entire life have I bought a TV by myself.

Keep in mind that over the years, I've not gone anywhere by myself if I could help it, and since last summer's traumas, I couldn't go many places by myself, let alone spend multiple hundreds of dollars.

But I did. The new TV is in the living room now, functional, beautiful, bigger than I ever imagined a TV to be. Bernie said to me on the phone after I checked out and was on my way home, "Now I know how much you love the Belmont."

Yes.

And then I came home and made my first foray into experimenting with PHP! While cooking party chicken wings for snacking on during the Belmont! I was successful in my attempt at PHP, and the chicken wings are great! I am a GENIUS!!

Fine, not a genius, but wow, I stretched myself today.

Nice TV.

A Climate Change

"Euonymus" is a cool name for a plant, and I like this one. It's a nice shrub: no thorns, no rancid-smelling blooms, no leaf drop to speak of. Even in winter it's a pretty burst of color.

I snapped a picture of the euonymus because it was bright and happy-looking, and I've included the picture here because for the past few days, I've felt brightened, and happy.

Last summer, I remember sitting in a hotel room alone (after sitting with my sister in her hospital room all afternoon), chatting with my good friend Lydia, and confessing to her that I was so damaged by events that I said "my hands shake all the time now." Fact is, they only shake most of the time now, and not everything makes me break down in tears. It's an improvement!

This week I had a strange burst of Action and cleaned the house indoors, washed down the front of the house outside, cleared my desk of paperwork, cooked, shopped, rearranged furniture, wrote about 6000 words, organized my closet, wrote letters ...

Bernie asked me what was up. I said, tentatively, "... I felt ... normal?"

Well, maybe "normal" wasn't the word that was the most descriptive. But it was easier to say than "For the first time in well over a year, I'm not so covered in anxiety that I can't think what to do next, I'm not so soul-sucked by depression and what-could-I-have-done-betters that all I want to do is huddle in a chair in a corner and hide, and my body doesn't feel like any moment could be the Big One, in which I just stop in my tracks and die like two of my uncles did."

Yeah, all of that. So ... "normal" will do.

I like the feeling. I hope it continues.

Come August, There Will Be Grapes

This then, is The Grapevine.

Stretching for about 30 feet along my northside fence, on my side AND my neighbor's, this son of a gun produces so many grapes we can't eat them all.

When I bought a little bare-root pack of grapes ... maybe five or six years ago, it was nothing more than a stick with a bud or two. I asked the nursery expert if it would grow in a pot, and she told me it could, but not to expect a lot from it. She went on to tell me I'd have to spray it with several different chemicals every year, blah, blah, blah. I didn't buy $50 worth of chemicals -- the grape starts were marked down to End-of-the-Season worthless. I took it home and plunked it in a pot, [see red arrow] watered it, and wondered if it would last the summer.

The following spring, to my surprise, it began to sprout again. I moved the pot to a spot by the fence where I had a trellis, stuck a paving block underneath it so it couldn't put down roots in the soil, gave it its own emitter on the irrigation line, and forgot about it. I hoped it would vine up on the fence for greenery, but I never expected grapes.

By the following spring, the pot had become a wintering spot for ants, and a clump of grass three feet tall had started in the pot. I yanked out the grass, threw in a handful of Osmocort slow-release fertilizer pellets, and evicted the ants by turning on the irrigation system. The plant went nuts shooting out tendrils in every direction. We had a few bunches of grapes, yay! They were small, but tasty.

The following spring I noticed two things: The pot was actually lifted on one side by the vine's grip on the fence; and ... water wasn't draining from the pot.

Okay, three things, the third being that the pot was only about half full of soil, thanks to successive wintering damned ants. Well, I thought, that lack of drainage and soil will do Mr. Grape in for sure. Wrong yet again. We gave away grapes to everyone we knew, until people were avoiding us; we were sick of grapes and left them for the birds. Last year Bernie found a fellow at work who liked the grapes, so I kept packing him down with shopping bags of grapes to take in to work.

This year, I vowed to hack away the vine and allow only a few clusters to ripen. Over the weekend, however, Bernie informed me he had a co-worker ask if the grapes were ripe yet, and could he have some.

Fine, we'll do our part for world hunger; I will only trim up the grapes that the dogs might reach. Sebastian has no sense at all when it comes to eating fruit, and grapes are not good for dogs. (I hope that damned parrot enjoys them.)

The Year of Destructo Machines

First it was the dishwasher, and I guess I'll just blame the rest of it on the dishwasher's incendiary speeches that inspired the continuing uprisings.

The dishwasher, a glitzy quiet and efficient machine bought in 1997, began to hoick up water into its own electronic innards. Water + Wiring = Not Good. Then the CD changer began to malfunction. Then the refrigerator in the kitchen, a monolith also bought in 1997. (The squat little creature in the garage bought by Bernie's parents in 1941 still trundles on, never ever having needed a freon recharge or service.)

The air conditioner kacked on us, during the last heat wave. Then the dryer died. Then the washer. (The stove I had replaced about five years ago because the one that was in here was shitty, but that's not about this year.)

Before the weather got too cold, we had to replace the water heater.

Whoops, forgot about the pool's circulation pump that had to be replaced last summer.

Both Alex and John's computers bit the dust last fall.

Mere days ago, my laptop betrayed me and disappeared an entire day's worth of writing. Hours. HOURS and HOURS of writing. Product failure!

In the last couple days, Bernie's laptop (only a few months younger than mine) began to act very, very screwy, so he did a complete system wipe and restore. It's acting screwier than ever, and running really, really insanely hot.

This weekend, the television died. The End, Finis. For a while, it acted wonky but we could get it to work by rapping it smartly on the top. Nevermore, said the Raven, flying in the window to perch upon our chamber door. This is an ex-TV.

While working on the Piker Press cover and updating my blog this weekend, I was less than pleased to observe that my beloved Sony monitor was rendering some blurry shit in regular lines down the screen.

Oh, and of course, let us not forget my digital camera that went toes up this past winter. When I grumped about it to the salesman at the electronics store, he said, "Wow, it was four years old? That's a long time for a camera."

Planned obsolescence and crappy manufacturing are a bite.

In the mean time, the 67-year-old refrigerator in the garage cackles to itself and says, "Pussies."

Still Baby-Sitting the Process

It seems like hours since I last posted, but obviously that isn't the case.

I blame it on the new laptop, as I have only installed AVG Free Virus Protection on it until I decide what all I want to spend, and I refuse to surf or mess around on the internet with the New and Glitzy until it is adequately protected.

And of course, I'm continuing to write my someday-to-be-serialized-in-the-Piker Press novel, "Transitions" on it. Not going to risk an infection; not going to stop writing. The new laptop is in quarantine, except from me.

It seems like days since I sat down at the computer this morning. In reality, it's only been 14 hours. My ass is mighty tired.

I've had breaks: I get up when my buns are aching so bad I can't think anymore; I did get off the exam stool I use as seating to make lunch for me and Bernie; I hobbled up to the mailbox, and did other quick tasks before perching before the screen again. I proof-read, formatted, and loaded in excess of 20 articles to the Press.

What could possibly make me so assiduous? Why, only this: I subscribed to "Geek Squad" and their online auto-backup service. They'll back up my shit automatically for $50/year. Daily. DAILY. No more freak outs at losing stuff.

However, the first dump of files to their secure retrieval site is taking forever. And since this ass-hat computer feels compelled to hibernate every ten minutes if there's no activity, I've been here holding its ass-hat hand all day ... and because playing Spider Solitaire for 14 hours isn't all that appealing, I've been working on the Press.

I don't know why it's taking so long to transfer the files. I have observed that .psd's take forever to transfer. And with all the cover art and practice pieces, I have a lot of .psd's. Damn.

Currently the thing says that 75% of my files are saved. I think I have to just let this machine hibernate and pick up where it left off in the morning.

Oh, and it's about 10 - 15 degrees colder than it should be at this time of year, here. That doesn't help.

No Open House

What, three posts in one day?

Call it a whim. Call it guilt at having not posted for a while. Call it can't go outside the damn house or have the damn windows open because of the damn wind.

This has been an unseasonably windy spring. An unreasonably windy spring. When the winds let up last week, we rejoiced, only to have the temperatures leap up to 110 degrees, which is the shits, although it did take the swimming pool from "cryogenic" to blissful.

Then someone turned on the "wind" switch again, and there are trees down all over the place. Fortunately, not in our yard -- so far.

Plowed fields are now being deposited 60 miles up into the mountains and up everyone's nose with the gusts in excess of 40 mph.

My Japanese maple's leaves have all curled, crisped at the edges, battered and dehydrated by the wind.

Forget swimming -- it's now too cold again for dips in the pool, and even if one did, one would have to take a bath afterwards because of the amount of mud in the air.

And monumentally irritating is the fact that although the house is only at about 70 degrees, when the wind kicked into high gear this afternoon, we had to close up the windows and turn on the AC -- to clean up the air in the house so that we could stop coughing and sneezing. We won't be able to open up to catch cool air tonight -- there's too much dirt carried on it.

Places along the highways where farmers have plowed fields are almost obscured by the crap in the air. I went to the store this morning and was assailed not only by the wind but by the scent of freshly-spread chicken manure. This is May, for heaven's sake, not March!

In this last picture, Howie's expression says it all. His tail, usually held high in exuberance, is down. He's squinting. His ears are in an annoyed position. As I type this, he's not even in this room. He's gone back to the bedroom, having given up on the day.

He should have been swimming with me. Instead, we're hiding from the wind.

Yes, Every Day

A couple of people know that my New Year's Resolution for the past two years has been to create something every day.

Last year fell short of the goal as my life plummeted into abject misery with my mother's illness, my sister's death, and my own winter of Endlessly Being Sick, but this year, I'm pleased to be able to say that midway through May, I've succeeded in my goal.

Most of what I've done has been to write; along with a couple short stories, I finished an untitled sequel to my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel, "Truck Stops", and am 50k+ into a novel called "Transitions."

I've done some cover art for the Piker Press, and even a Fever Dreams cartoon a couple weeks ago.

For a while I maintained a blog about the creative effort, but after I kept writing, "Well, I wrote another 400 words last night," over and over, I abandoned and deleted the blog, and promised to update the project here instead.

I was very pleased with the result when I did this graphic for Mel Trent's story, "Angel Hunter" from her book The Immortal Guns of Talon Constantine. Mel, Lydia Manx and I brainstormed some images, which was most helpful, and then, when I started to work on it, a weird thing happened -- the art began to flow in the same way my writing does ... it just began to happen.

This is unusual for me. Ever since I was little, I hid while I was drawing or sketching, and if I couldn't hide, I kept to conventional subjects and ways of drawing them. Someone was always looking over my shoulder, saying, "What are you doing?" or far worse, "Oh, that's going to be soooo good!" As a result, art work is stressful for me. Writing isn't, usually, because I'm downright shitty about it and if anyone pesters me while I'm writing, God help them, because I will roar at them to take off.

The above graphic -- well, I got into it so deeply that I didn't care if anyone saw me, and if they had said something, I'd have roared at them to leave me alone. Sounds rather rude, but for me, it's a big, big step forward.

Also, I give credit to the ghosts in the machine; Photoshop glitched in one layer and did the gradient of color a twist I didn't ask for ... and it made all the difference in the result.

The Importance of Being Comfy

Once upon a time, there was a chair that had been in a hotel room for years.

Its fabric dulled over the years, and its matching ottoman began to look a bit ratty. The hotel dumped it, and all its brothers and sisters; a furniture dealer carried them all away and stacked them in a dusty warehouse that sold, on the cheap, used furniture.

One day a couple came in looking for cheap chairs to put in their TV room, and took home the dull chair and its twin, with their matching ratty ottomans. It was a good thing, and for the next nine years, the couple reveled in the comfiness of the old chair, guests got so comfy they fell asleep in the arms of the old chair, and the dog of the house loved the chair so much that he stopped sleeping beside his muvver and slept in the chair instead. Three novels, a bushel basket of short stories, and more than a few movie reviews were written from that chair. The chair was pleased that not only the dog loved to sleep in it, but the mistress also slept in its arms when she was sick, or needed to be near the fireplace to keep it going in the cold winter nights.

Alas! The upholstery could not last forever, and began to disintegrate. Time had its way with the chair and its twin; they were tired and worn out and ready to return to the earth.

When they were gone, the mistress of the house was inconsolable, because all that was left to sit in and write was a bony piece of lawn furniture brought in from the porch. (There was a set of living room furniture, but they were neither particularly comfortable nor well-situated for writing. Thus they were invisible to the mistress of the house.)

The woman knew that she had to find the proper successor to the position of Comfy Chair. She went into furniture stores and sat in every chair there was to offer. Some were too deep, so that she had no back support at all; some were so squooshy she gagged; others were just too high for her stubby legs and her feet dangled, a situation sure to cut off circulation to her legs. Some had backs too low to allow one to fall asleep in; some were just so butt-ugly that the woman knew that she would pour gasoline on them and burn them down within a fortnight.

Then, just the other day, weary with watching the rather lousy movie "Prince Caspian", the mistress of the house skidded to a stop in front of Pier 1 Imports, a store fabled for chairs designed for short people.

She went in and once again, sat in every chair in the store. And then it happened: her husband, knowing how short his wife was, and how comfort-oriented her rear end was, directed her to sit in a chair. The mistress of the house sat, and she and the chair fell immediately in love.

This is that chair, and its friend, the matching ottoman.

Difficult to tell in this humble photograph, the chair is smiling smugly that the woman has already fallen asleep in it several times while writing, and the dog cannot wait for the woman to go to bed so that he can climb up and snug in.

And amazingly, it's not only The Comfy Chair, it's beautiful, too.

No Pictures Yet

Last night, an amazing thing happened.

The novel, "Transitions", that I have been working on swelled to 42,250 words. And I was pleased with it. It was the last chapter before I would take the characters and dump their poor little lives into a blender.

Then the amazing thing happened. The mouse on my laptop started jumping all over the place; I couldn't 'select' ANYthing, couldn't 'refresh' anything, and when I went to my document, I had 41,390 words ... ending right where I'd started writing five hours before. 900 words ... GONE.

GONE.

I was so numbed by shock and disgust that I drank my glass of wine and went to bed. Even forgot to feed Howie, that's how upset I was.

Around 1 am I woke, sat straight upright, and fired up the laptop to see if I was lucky, and that I had only dreamed losing all those words. Nope, not a dream. And the thought of sleep was far from me. I fed the poor hungry How, and gritted my teeth, and began to hammer.

By 4:15 am, the word count was back up to 42,130 or so, and some of the sentences I remembered well enough to use, and I was compulsively hitting 'Save' after every paragraph, even though I had 'saved' the stuff that was lost, too.

By this evening I realized that I just couldn't risk having that happen again, so I spent my stash and bought a new laptop.

It's a pretty thing, but it sure is a pain in the ass getting to know a new machine.

A New Look to What Had Been a Mess

Well over a year ago, I got irritated by the sheer bulk of our "Breath-of-Heaven" shrub.

What had been sold to me as a small, compact shrub ("Oh, it will get about two, maybe three feet across") had grown five feet high and eight feet across and was killing everything around it. So I decided to remove it. I got about half-way through, got tired and left the job for another day.

Then life went to hell and gone, and what was left of the shrub died. The front yard looked like the remains of a toxic waste dump -- until a couple weekends ago when Bernie came to my rescue and removed the rest of the carcass.

After removal, we put down cedar bark mulch, and moved two pots into place; the bigger one will eventually hold English lavender, the smaller one seasonal color.

In spite of global warming, it has been so chilly and windy out that I haven't felt much like puttering in the garden, or even sitting out to gloat over how nice the front looks now.

Just a few more particulars on the Breath-of-Heaven (coleonema pulchra), variety "Sunset Gold": The foliage is light yellow-green, very soft to the touch, and smells wonderful when you run your hands over it.

However, it makes lousy greens in bouquets, as it just dries up -- a temperamental shrub. In keeping with that personality, the shrub is very touchy about the soil around it, at least when small. Pulling nearby weeds out killed two of the first ones I planted.

I've noticed that our city is planting them along walkways here and there. My guess is that someone told them that it was a small, compact shrub, too.

Wish It Were Different

About a year and a half ago, or maybe it was a hundred years -- it seems like that some days -- I left the house to walk in the early morning, trying desperately to shed the pain I felt after talking to my mother on the phone.

She hadn't yet been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, but I knew that something bad was happening to her. A few months before, I'd made a commitment to call her on the phone every day to keep tabs on her. With each passing day she vomited into my ear such bitterness and hateful memories that I would come away from each encounter shaking, feeling battered to the heart. I heard things about her life that I should never have been told; I would rather have gone to my grave without knowing the secret feelings she harbored.

Anyway, on that morning, a hundred years ago, I walked and walked, and cried, and prayed, because there was just nothing else I could do. After a while I turned to head home, and there in the sky was a rainbow, which the Bible tells us is God's promise to never again destroy the world in a flood. I really felt that the rainbow, for me, was a promise from God that eventually, everything would turn out all right.

I remember that rainbow every day, just about.

I remembered it last night when I got a call from the Pennsylvania State Police, asking me to please call my mother and "reassure" her. She'd called 9-1-1 to complain that she couldn't get her caregiver to leave the house. I explained to the trooper that she has Alzheimer's and doesn't understand that she must have 24-hour care. He was understanding, but I could imagine him rolling his eyes at the ceiling in exasperation.

So I called Mom's house, and she answered the phone, even though it was after 11pm her time, and she should have been in bed. I tried to "reassure" her, and she reacted just as I knew she would, with invective and curses, threats to cut me out of her will, loud and angry demands to be given a competency exam, and just plain old mean ass shit-talk. Nothing I could say made any difference in her anger. Finally I just gave up, and as she shouted, just said over and over again, "I love you, Mom," hoping that somewhere in that ravaged mind the woman I admired so when I was growing up would hear my words.

She hung up on me in her fury, and after a few minutes I called back and asked to speak to her caregiver, which she let me do, to my surprise. I had a long chat with the caregiver, a pleasant chat; the woman is surely earning a place in heaven putting up with this aggressive, nasty stage of Alzheimer's.

I'm trying to keep the rainbow foremost in my mind.

Mollissima

There, in the shadows of the lemon tree, a very fiend of the jungle lurks.

Yes! It is the scarlet macaw of the house, the dirty-fighting biting bee-yotch, Molly!

Alex and John adopted Molly last September, while I was gone at the other end of the country and could not say, "Do not bring a #@!!##! parrot into this house!" In chagrin and fear, I have tried to be friends with the bird, in spite of the fact that I still cannot forgive her for the nasty bite on a finger she gave me during the first couple days of NaNoWriMo, which caused me to limp while typing for the rest of the month.

If only she didn't bite, I would be crazy about her.

Today was her very first ever day OUTSIDE. John has a kind of leash to keep her from climbing too high, and Bernie let her climb up in the lemon tree. She was clearly bemused by the sounds and sights of the world, biting off the lemon blossoms, tasting tiny unripe lemons, gnawing on the grapevine that has looped over into the tree.

She wasn't too thrilled about the harness (called a "Feather Tether") but put up with it until she was indoors again, and then chomped it to bits.

Molly is only a little over a year old, a mere baby in a species that lives to be over 70. She has to be either indoors or on her leash: if she gets lost, like a little child, she might not be able to find her way home. And in this season, in this land, there isn't a year-round selection of fruits available in a jungle canopy.

She looks great against the green lemon leaves, though, and she had a great time climbing on a little clump of branches.

For me, the best part about her behavior was seeing her watch a bee that was buzzing from blossom to blossom. You could see INSTINCT kick in as her eyes focused on the bee, and she tracked that insect with such interest that I know macaws eat bugs.


Macaws do have expressions on their faces. This last picture is of Molly, La Mollissima, with a happy smile on her face about her first play-date with the great, wide world.

Poem In Your Pocket Day

I thought a lot about what poem I would like to share with someone today, almost too long as today is nearly gone.

But finally, I decided on an excerpt from Don Marquis' book Archy and Mehitabel, from the chapter entitled, "mehitabel dances with boreas." Mehitabel is a cat with loose morals and no home. She's a free spirit, who will not buy into conventional life. At times, that makes her suffer, but she's willing to suffer, just so she doesn't have to cave. Since I was in Junior High, Mehitabel's spirit (not her sexual morals) have been an inspiration to me in hard times.

"whirl mehitabel whirl
spin mehitable spin
thank god you re a lady still
if you have got a frozen skin

blow wind out of the north
to hell with being a pet
my left front foot is brittle
but there s life in the old dame yet

dance mehitabel dance
caper and shake a leg
what little blood is left
will fizz like wine in a keg

wind come out of the north
and piece to the guts within
but some day mehitabel s guts
will string a violin

moon you re as cold as a frozen
skin of a yellow banan
that sticks in the frost and the ice
on the top of a garbage can

and you throw a shadow so chilly
that it can barely leap
dance shadow dance
for you ve got no place to sleep

whistle a tune north wind
on my hollow marrow bones
i ll dance the time with three good feet
here on the alley stones

freeze you bloody december
i never could stay a pet
but i am a lady in spite of hell
and there s life in the old dame yet

whirl mehitabel whirl
flirt your tail and spin
dance to the tune your guts will cry
when they string a violin

eight of my lives are gone
it s years since my fur was slicked
but blow north wind blow
i m damned if i am licked

girls we was all of us ladies
we was o wotthehell
and once a lady always game
by crikey blood will tell

i might be somebody s pet
asleep by the fire on a rug
but me i was always romantic
i had the adventurous bug

caper mehitabel caper
leap shadow leap
you gotto dance till the sun comes up
for you got no place to sleep"

That's not all of it, by any means, but that last stanza has been a billboard for me, all my life. Hard times come. They hurt, and they're cold. But

"you gotto dance till the sun comes up
for you got no place to sleep"

Still dancin', Mehitabel.

Thanks for the thought, Don Marquis.

Gorgeous Weekend

A lovely weekend, it was indeed.

On Saturday we spent a day on a friend's patio beside his pool. He threw a grand barbecue for his wife's birthday, and Bernie's and my 33rd wedding anniversary. The temperature was in the 80's, the food was good, the company delightful. For a brief time, I got into the pool with the kids and swam around in the perfect water. (He had solar heating put in, just so he could stretch the season.)


Sunday was downright hot, and yet our pool was just a tad too cold for me to get in. I did wade a lot, and played water games with the dogs, fixed the north side sprinkler system (I do that when it's running -- a great job for a hot day), and made liberal use of the "mist" function on the hose.

Alex, after doing some heavy-duty cleaning, was hot and itchy enough to wade right in.

Later, Lil came out and spent about an hour in the pool, and her lips didn't even turn blue.

By time for bed, I was hot enough to brave anything, and took my skin out in the dark and yes! The pool was chill ... but oh, so nice.

Telemarketers and the F-word, Be Prepared

I truly hate using the phone; I have ever since I quit smoking cigarettes.

And that drawing of a phone really dates me, when the concept "phone" brings such an image to mind.

Phones have been on my mind for the last few days, after Bern started getting nuisance calls from heavily-accented women demanding he tell them what medications he was taking.

He hung up on them, of course. But after some days of being called twice a day, he got fed up on Monday morning, and when his phone woke him up and he heard the garbly voice, he just climbed out of bed, found me in the kitchen, and handed me the phone, saying, "It's for you."

There's a reason he would do that.

Because I hate the phone, and hate being required to answer the phone, I [hate squared] telemarketers. I have been known to revile them. On one memorable occasion, I delivered a long and intense lecture to a telemarketer about finding another job, a job with some honor to it, a job that would not accrue the bad karma that she was attracting to her soul. I'm not sure why she listened to me for 20 minutes. Maybe she went on to find another job.

In any event, Bernie's handing me his violated phone was exactly like pointing out an intruder to a junkyard dog and saying, "Sic' em."

And so, I did. I allowed all my inner Darth Vader to spill into my voice, and added to that my usual morning grouchiness (never have been a morning person), my fury at someone having disturbed my husband's sleep (over-protective -- well, yeah, a bit), and my hatred of telemarketers. I demanded the name of the company that was calling. I demanded that the caller speak slowly and clearly. I informed the caller that I was going to report them to the FCC for calling a phone number on the "Do Not Call" list. I explained forcefully that their company faced a $500,000 fine for violating the Do Not Call list. (I think I read that somewhere.)

Some time during the sentence that boomed "I want you to remove this phone number from your calling list right now and never call this number again," the caller hung up on me.

Heh, I said to myself.

And then the shitheads called Bernie again after he'd gone to work.

Clearly, some new strategy was necessary. If they could withstand my Roar of Anger, there was no point in me roaring at them again.

Oddly, they would call at specific times. 9am. 5pm. I kept Bernie's phone with me this morning, and when the phone rang at 9am, caller ID showed me it was our buddies at US Pharmacy (which Google identified as a source for "phentarmine"), I cleared my throat and answered, in my most professional receptionist voice, "Ruess Writers' Group, may I have your account number?"

Click.

They called back at 11:30 and I did the same. A man's voice expostulated some foreign word three times, then he hung up on me, too.

Tomorrow, when they call, if they call, I'm going to ask them which writer they have an account with, and when they futter around, I'm going to give them the number to our main office ... which will be the police department's non-emergency number.

If I can't get rid of them, I may as well fuck with them.

So to speak.